hobart

i finally got a room at a hostel yesterday.  actually, they messed up my reservation and technically i didn't have anywhere to stay but they squeezed me in and i move to my new room in a couple hours.  i did figure out why i'm having so much trouble finding places to live here.  there was a christian youth group of about 500 kids, the wooden boat show is coming up, and there are sailing races.  if i ever do make it back to australia i will be sure to book everything months in advance.  

my new hostel is pretty overpriced and crappy but its cheaper than the hotels and this is the first place that has had decent wifi in this entire country.  i was looking at a room above an irish pub yesterday, that sounds sort of romantic and fun, but now i'm just too lazy to move again.  

australia day came and went, i think its comparable to our independence day.  its basically a day of everyone getting as drunk as possible by a barbecue.  this year, though, there are bush fires, a cyclone, tornadoes and record flooding in many places so not a great weekend for most people.  there was a great street market and i did my best not to buy more crap to haul around.  i went to an 'invasion day' protest (the same as how native americans call columbus day by other names).  i saw very few people that looked like they could be native to tasmania.  and it seemed like all they really wanted was to change the date of australia day ('what do we want?' 'change the date' 'when do we want it?' 'now!').  i didn't get it at all.  

i went to see the great moscow circus (their name, not mine).  i can't remember the last time i went to the circus but i saw the tent when i came to town and it just demanded my attendance.  none of the performers looked particularly russian except for the fact that they were wearing things that had 'cccp' on them.  it was a pretty weird experience.  there was one ring and in between acts 2 'clowns' would do little skits while the set was changed, they were great.  there was knife throwing, a trapeze act without swings (the guy hooked his feet under a bar and he was the swing for the girl, super cool), trained ponies, a troop of acrobats on crazy giant swings and trampolines, a woman doing an aerial act that was somewhere between gymnast and stripper, and the big finale of the nite, the motorcycle cage.  they fit 5 guys in that little sphere that was moved and anchored onto the stage moments earlier.  gotta have a lot of trust in your coworkers.

the kids were pretty funny.  every little girl showed up in her best princess costume.  i sat next to the most ADD boy i've ever seen, either screamed in anger or happiness the entire 3 hours.  couldn't sit still for 10 seconds, which made his mother yell at him every 20 seconds.  if you don't sit down we're leaving!  he knew it was all empty threats so he was on his worst behavior possible.  

i'm having a chill day today, i'm going to wander around town and read a book.  or laze in bed.  not sure yet.

rewind to coolangatta

last week i spent 6 days with kawika and scotty in coolangatta.  its right on the border between queensland and new south wales which made it the most confusing place i've yet been.  there's one hour time difference between the two states and the border is not straight so driving along its 6oclock, now its 5oclock, turn and its 6oclock again, etc.  on one side of the street all the stores and restaurants were closed, cross and everything was open.  not too bad if you're just wandering around but make an appointment, go to the movies, book a flight, you always had to check which time zone it was in.  kawika set my iphone to queensland time but i could never remember which one it was.  

i checked off a lot of my oz to-do list while i was there, i surfed at snapper rocks and byron bay (aussie waves are great, easy for out of shape surfers like me), ate vegemite (not bad, tastes kinda like licking a beef bouillon cube), finally figured out cricket, and saw lots of animals at the currumbin nature preserve.  

the nature preserve was pretty nice.  i'm not a big fan of zoos but i couldn't leave australia without seeing all the animals that you think of when you think of this place.  lots of poisonous and bitey things, snakes and crocodiles, endangered cassowaries, and the usual koalas, kangaroos and tasmanian devils.  i finally saw a dingo, i didn't know they were just dogs.  i went to a bird show, aboriginal dance and croc feeding.  

an hour into my visit my slippers finally broke, a very sad moment.  cynthia gave me a pair of slippers she found right before i left and they fit perfectly, and i've worn them every day since.  they've been up volcanoes, down rivers, and walked towns all over the place.  so i was barefoot in a nature preserve at the hottest part of the day in the hottest month of the year in the hottest year on record.  wasn't awesome.  so i went to sit in the shade and have lunch and my french fries were violently attacked by an ibis.  worse than the chickens at home, these things have 5 inch beaks.  i did find slippers for sale in one of the gift stores and now I'm wandering around in bright blue palm tree australia flip flops.  

i met a woman (claudia) who lives a half hour from me on kauai.  she's a friend of kawika's and i know her husband but have never met her.  we surfed byron bay together.  

wednesday was a big day at the house.  kawika and scott were both going back to work on thursday.  kawika works in nauru as security for a political asylum 'camp', on 2 weeks, off 1 week, so he spent a lot of his time off getting random stuff done.  scott took a mine job, 3 months in south australia as an emergency medical response guy.  much of the day was packing and last minute details while i lounged watching breaking bad.  

at one point i was in the mall and found myself jealously eyeing a set of matching dishware.  i think that's a sign that it's time to think about home again.

gold coast surf museum

diving the tasman sea

today was my only planned dive in tasmania, i had been emailing with underwater adventures and she told me that there were sea dragons living around hobart.  i can't remember wanting to see anything underwater as much as i've wanted to find a sea dragon.  sue told me to meet her at one of the docks at 7:45, there would be one other woman diving with me who was equally excited to find them.

i got to the dock at 7:40, georgina got there at 7:43, wait, small talk, wait, wait, no boat.  finally at 8:20 sue shows up, apparently a cruise ship came past while she was loading tanks and the wake knocked 2 overboard, sue had to dive for them.  great start.  

the boat wasn't too nice, there were 6 tanks sort of bungeed to the sides, kinda messy, stuff everywhere, sue seemed pretty nice.  she didn't have any crew so she wasn't going to dive with us which immediately annoyed both of us since its much easier to find things underwater if you've seen them before.  i remember getting directions in cairns for an entire colony of clownfish and never finding it, so now georgina and i are going to have to locate an animal that looks like kelp.  great.

we travelled about 50 minutes to our first site at betsey island.  the sky was grey and rainy and the wind was picking up.  there were dozens of crayfish pots in the area that sue wanted to drop anchor so it took us a while to get settled in.  she got me a selection of 7mil wetsuits, all of them covered in dog hair (apparently her dog finds them very comfy to sleep on).  i finally got one to fit, which meant that i could fasten it properly and still manage to breathe a little.  i was actually worried that in darker water in a suit that was making me claustrophobic i might actually freak out.  but i got ready, suit, boots, hood, gloves, 32 pounds of weights, everything.  i could barely bend my arms.  georgina was using a dry suit.  it took us about an hour to get geared up.

now the moment i'd been dreading, touching water.  it was 16 degrees.  and in a 7mil wetsuit it felt like 16 degrees.  so fucking cold.  it was like getting wrapped in ice, then buried in snow.  then stabbed in the head with icicles.  i can't remember ever being that cold in my life.  every time i moved my head to look around water would channel straight down my back.  but its for a purpose.

the visibility was about 5 meters, kinda greenish water.  kelp forests, lots of weird plants, not a lot of fish.  there were wrasse, box cowfish, anemones, stars, a rockfish, couple crabs.  mostly just plants floating back and forth in the current.  i was praying for a sea dragon, please god let me see one so i don't ever have to get back in this water.  please please please.  

the first dive was 48 minutes and by the end i was shaking and my teeth were chattering and no sea dragon.  sue kept asking if we saw the felled tree, that's where they live, or the backside of the reef 10m away, some are there.  this is why we wanted a guide.  grr.

we took off to the site for the second dive, the blowhole in blackman's bay.  there was no way i could take my suit off between dives so i put a jacket on top and jumped up and down to try to get warm.  didn't work.  i ate half a box of tim-tam's hoping that might help (kawika introduced me to tim-tam's last week, possibly the greatest chocolate cookie ever created, they even sell them in the airport gift stores).  

i was cold going in, i thought i was gonna die the moment i hit the water.  i vaguely remember wondering if my nipples could cut through a 7mil suit.  this dive was a bit shallower and i was too floaty so i swam back after 20 minutes for more weights, i was now carrying 38 pounds.  that amazed me, 14 is the most i've ever used before.  

more kelp, more cute cowfish, 48 minutes of no sea dragon.  as we swam back to the boat sue yelled that we should try one more time a little further down, maybe go until we have about 40bar left.  so we went back down on the other side of the reef, total dive time for 2nd dive of 63 minutes, no sea dragon.  i was pretty sure my fingertips were going to break off.

i was told that we were only doing 2 dives, and although i was upset that there was no sea dragon i was pretty ok with getting dried off.  the weather had gotten worse, the sun hadn't come out all day, wind and rain, all i could think about was hot showers and obscene amounts of food.

but sue felt that we should do a third dive.  georgina gave the decision to me since i was the coldest (her drysuit was leaking so she wasn't too warm, but she dived in antarctica so this probably wasn't that bad for her).  whatever.  i came all this way, half frozen, i'll probably never be back, might as well try for another 20 minutes.  sue's rationale was that the first site gets battered by storms, the second site had a bunch of spear divers a few days ago, and the third site doesn't usually get any traffic.  and that's when georgina got pissed.  imagine an older, shorter, english housewife getting pissed.  it was very quiet.  but i agreed, why go to the crappy sites first, especially when the more pristine site is only 15 minutes from the dock?  we're both annoyed.

third site was boronia beach.  sue was begging us to go for just a little while, even though one tank only has 100bar and georgina had to use her tank from the last dive.  we decided to go for 20 minutes or until one of us had no air.  definitely not diving by padi standards.  not even close.  i think sue felt bad because usually she's in the water with people and can find the sea dragon hangouts and maybe her crew called in sick, and this wasn't a great day of diving.  i decided to leave my camera on the boat for the third dive since it wasn't doing anything but wearing down the battery.

she dropped us at the edge of a reef (ok go in here you can see the reef, swim with it on your left, if you go around that corner into the other bay that's ok i'll follow your bubbles).  freezing freezing freezing i think i'm gonna die and OH MY GOD THERE'S A SEA DRAGON!  no, 2!  

possibly the weirdest animal i've ever seen in my life.  it has a snout like a seahorse, a fat little body with teensy fluttery useless-looking fins and a long tail that's half fat and half really skinny.  in total about 14 inches long, and every color in the crayon box.  the sun had just come out (prophetic, i think), and every time he moved different parts of his body turned different colors in the light.  2 lumps on his head that looked like horns, and 2 long side fins that just dangled looking like kelp.  there was also another set of tiny fluttery fins where you'd think his ears might be.  the overall effect is like an elephant flying with a couple pairs of little tinker bell wings.  totally ridiculous.

and of course i didn't have my camera.  i signaled to georgina that i was going to the boat and i'd be right back.  i sprinted.  in a 7mil suit.  by the time i got back i was so out of breath i had to sit on the surface trying to breathe.  the suit was far too tight for a proper breath.  but there's a sea dragon so i went down anyway.  

one of them was still there so we spent the next 25 minutes watching him.  he just swam back and forth between a couple big rocks and showed off for us, like he was on a sea dragon catwalk.  and i totally forgot i was cold.

sea dragon!

tasmania

i decided to spend my last week in tasmania, seemed like a cool thing to do.  i emailed with a scuba company and they set up a sea dragon dive for me tomorrow so that's where i booked a hotel.  all the hostels were again sold out so this is officially the most expensive place i've stayed.

and to my great surprise, only because of my lack of research and other sea dragon locations, i find myself in a big horrible city again.

when i thought of tasmania and looked online i saw mountains and lakes and rivers and adventures and surf and scuba diving.  it never occurred to me that i was flying into the capital city of one of the australian states.  grrrr.

i caught a shuttle from the airport and was one of the last dropoffs so i got a bit of a city tour and what a letdown.  i was thinking of small beach towns and backwoods laziness but instead i think i'm in downtown seattle.  not what i prepared for.  and not even a good seattle, i had to walk blocks and blocks from my hotel to find wifi at a pub.  boo.

so i'll do my dive then go to the tourist agency and find a new town to live in, something without 6 lane roads and maybe some greenery.

i got a bit behind on my blogs, spent a great week in coolangatta, but that post will have to wait until i have more than 8% battery left on my computer.

daintree forest and cape tribulation

shockingly, woke up without a hangover, and iseta came by to pick me up again.  in a white 1972 mercedes convertible.  we drove off to the daintree forest preserve for some beach and forest trails.  the ride took about an hour through tree covered, windy roads along the waters edge, completely breathtaking.  2 women in a convertible had everyone honking horns at us the whole way.

we stopped on the way at iseta's house and i met her mother and sister.  her mother is 74 and broke her leg 5 days ago, badly.  she was up on a ladder pruning her shrubs because she doesn't like how anyone else does them, fell off, knocked herself out and got airlifted to the hospital.   now she's recovering at iseta's house where she will have to be for 8 weeks.  she's a serious world traveler and isn't taking to complete bed rest very well.  she and her older lady friends will just pack up and camp in the bush for a week at a time, or hop a flight to india or asia with tents and no plans.  i'd like to be like that when i'm her age.  for now she's trying to content herself by planning her first new york city trip.

back on the road, the forest was beautiful, smelled like freshness.  our first stop, and the furthest point away, was cape tribulation.  i love saying the word tribulation for some reason.  iseta asked what it meant and i wasn't sure, but it sounded like a good boat name.  its not, after further reflection.

along the road there are 'cassowary crossing' signs everywhere but we never spotted one.  a blue 5' tall bird.  that would've been cool.  

cape tribulation is a point that juts out into the ocean, where jungle meets ocean.  quite nice.  can't swim, though, jellies and sharks and such.  we're walking up the beach, for miles there's only one other person around.  and it turns out to be bob, one of our buddies from the live aboard.  of all the places to run into someone.  bob's main purpose in life now is to take pictures of stars and celestial events through his telescope.  he came to australia on a cruise that catered to astronomy buffs, they sailed to the best place to see the last solar eclipse.  we sat on the beach and looked at bob's eclipse pictures.  he's pretty good at it.  

we walked a bit more then headed back south a bit to find more of iseta's favorite spots, she's a great tour guide.  no cassowaries, no crocodiles, lots of great scenery.  it really impressed upon me how giant this country is.  endless ocean and beaches, tree covered mountains, forests, swamps, as far as the eye can see.

our bathroom stop in the jungle was surprising in a couple ways, firstly that australia is constantly reminding me how clean it is.  middle of nowhere and the place is sparkling.  as i'm reaching for my toilet paper a giant spider jumps down and lands on the very last square sticking out.  startled me, so of course i jump, which means i pee down my leg and all over the floor.  and i can't get any toilet paper.  great.  i had just been complaining to iseta that i haven't seen any wildlife.  here it is, in the most inconvenient spot imaginable.  i flick the paper and the spider runs up an inch, i pull down, flick again, he runs up an inch, pull down, repeat repeat repeat, eventually i have enough to try to clean up the situation.  the rest of the day i faintly smelled like urine.  nice.

we went to lunch, a couple more lookouts, ate the best ice cream ever made, then for a quick swim in shannonvale at a river.  maybe the river smell will overpower the pee smell.  the river is flowing just over the top of the bridge so kids are running back and forth on the road diving from both sides, screaming, pausing only long enough to let a car go by.  again, beautiful.

and then its time for me to go back to port douglas for a shuttle back to cairns.  great day.  i'm absolutely certain i'll run into iseta again somewhere.  

right now i'm on a plane to brisbane to see kawika and hopefully get a few days of surf. 

port douglas yacht club

iseta (my roommate from the live aboard) lives near port douglas so she picked me up on wednesday afternoon to go sailing at the port douglas yacht club.  we got there about 3pm for a drink and the club didn't open till 4, forcing us to do a little pub crawl to kill time.  we also needed to have some drinks on board so we bought a bottle of vodka and a couple soda waters and mixed our sailing drinks.  little too strong.

iseta is loved at the yacht club, and she's also been absent for several months for a boat delivery so everyone wanted her to come on their boat.  we picked a sun odyssey 40.  beautiful sailboat.  every wednesday all of the yacht clubs in australia have an open sail for anyone who shows up, sign up and you can go with someone.  we had a couple australians and a family from scotland.  there wasn't much wind and kinda cloudy but a gorgeous evening otherwise.  i got to steer the entire time, loved it.  

we went past a cruise ship and the 6man team and it kinda felt like home.

after the sail was dinner at the club and get to know the members.  which mostly consisted of me randomly sitting by people that looked like they had good stories, the old grizzled guys.  my favorite was steve, who had just power washed off the top of his foot.  he crossed the panama canal in an odd way.  he was in line on his cat and a skiff of russians pulled alongside, he thought he was being boarded by pirates.  turns out they had a freighter and wanted to hoist his boat on top and carry him through.  they'd charge him $1000 less than his normal fee and in turn they'd pocket the rest of the money.  they cooked for him and kept him drunk and did a mini dry dock on his boat.  put on some antifouling paint that's illegal in most places and he hasn't had a single barnacle since.

port douglas diving

i booked a trip with poseidon divers for a day on the outer reefs, further north than where i dove in cairns.  i probably shouldn't have gone because anything after the amazing time i had on the live aboard wouldn't be as great but i thought i should try one last reef system before i went back south.  i spent $250 on 3 dives and hours of boat time and it wasn't worth it at all.

the reef wasn't as alive, the visibility was lower and the crew was weird.  i did see some sharks and a lot of clown fish but overall not too great.

the crew on this boat operated with the idea that no one knows anything and should be treated as children doing their first dive.  i'm sure most of the people loved that, as i asked around and the majority of people hadn't been on a dive in at least a year, maybe 2 or 3, so a good refresher for them.  but sitting through an hour long briefing about 'this is a bcd, you inflate it with this button', 'this is your regulator, it goes in your mouth', drove me crazy.  i've done about 80 dives by now, which isn't much in comparison to people that have been diving for years, but i've also had to be in charge of my own equipment for the last 8 months and now i don't want anyone messing with my gear, and i certainly don't want to sit through the entire open water course on an uncomfortable boat deck.

every time i'd get set up and ready someone would come by and adjust something that i had just set how i like and i'd have to redo.  continual.  the worst was after the first dive.  we're coming up to the boat and my normal procedure is to surface about 10 feet away and float and look around and relax and enjoy before i get back on.  as i surface i feel hands grab me, deflate my bcd and pull me under so of course i'm fighting him, wtf?  apparently the procedure with poseidon is to come to the ladder under water, grab it and the dive master will peel off your fins and you walk up.  aaaagh hands off!  why can't i take my own fins off like i've been doing all these months?  again, most people probably loved this, an extra loving step from an overly motherly crew but i wanted nothing to do with it.  i fought my dive master as he's trying to drag me back underwater to the ladder, then trying to grab my fins.  dragging me underwater was unexpected so my reaction was a bit intense, my brain went into fight or flight i guess.  

so i had a talk with my dive master, a way way cheery french guy, and asked him if i could be exempt from the normal boat boarding procedure.  he in turn had to tell every other crew member that on the next dive one person would be surfacing away from the boat, don't be alarmed.  i got funny looks.

next dive ends and there's a lineup underwater for the ladder and i surface about 10 feet away to float.  instantly the crew on board is frantic that something is wrong even though i'm giving a giant ok signal.  when all the divers get on i swim over to the ladder but don't realize that my dive master has been waiting underwater for me, as i approach i feel him grab my legs and start pulling off my fins.  i can't figure out why this bothers me so much.  

third dive i surface in my spot, float, reassure the crew that i'm neither drowning nor in need of any help, and watch my dive master underwater at the ladder.  the rest of the divers are on and he's waiting for me.  seriously, you're not grabbing my feet again.  i see if i can wait him out, he's got a lot of work to do on board and maybe he'll just go away.  no.  so i peel off my fins 10 feet away and swim over to the ladder, he's upset with me.  

i don't normally try to be a troublemaker.  what a weird day.

port douglas

the first thing i did in port douglas was take a nap.  3 days of diving with little sleep, i ended up missing all of today.  i wanted to join up with the 6man team at the yacht club and slept right through practice.  when i finally woke up i had enough time to see the town and get groceries.  

port douglas is a beautiful place, and about as different from cairns as could be imagined.  its quiet and looks residential and there are miles and miles of perfect looking beaches.  you can't swim in them but they're there.  the closest beach is called 4 mile beach and there is a tiny area roped off with netting for swimming, the rest of the miles have warning signs for crocodiles, sharks and jellyfish.  so much for swimming.

australia is cool in that its environmentally conscious in every way.  lots of recycling, local foods, respect the land and reefs and animals.  i have a small kitchen in my new place so i went to cole's for food.  at the egg counter there were all sorts of expensive free range eggs and one tiny section of cheaper ones, all stamped in giant letters with the word 'CAGED'.  guilt tripped me into breaking my budget again.

i planned a last trip to the great barrier reef for tomorrow, and iseta lives here so wednesday i'm invited to be in her crew for sailing races at the yacht club.  then its back to cairns for a nite, a flight to brisbane, a bus to banora point and surfing with kawika for a week.  and maybe spend some time doing nothing.  traveling is exhausting.

cairns liveaboard

i went on a liveaboard dive boat for 3 days.  it was definitely the highlight so far of this trip.  friday morning i got picked up and taken to the boat, a massive dive boat but only 30 people.  after the worst dive buddy ever i was pretty nervous that i'd get stuck with someone i didn't like.  made small talk with people for a bit, the cutest boy on the boat sat next to me (good start), got our room assignments.  i shared a bunk with iseta, an australian/african woman maybe a few years older than me.  she was absolutely perfect.  

one constant since i've been in australia is the vast number of nordic type people i've met.  swedish, norwegian, danish, etc.  i'm not certain that nordic is the word i want but i don't have internet right now so that's what i'm calling them.  probably half the boat was from those countries.  the cute boy (colin) and i were the only americans.  

the initial trip to the reef was 3 hours and we spent the time getting briefed on the plans, watching a safety video, getting to know the people that we were stuck with for 3 solid days on a boat.  pretty quickly the group separated into the small groups that we'd spend all of our time with, and i loved them.  my friends were colin, darryl and angela (australian), chiu-ki (korea) and francesco (france), iseta (australia), linn and annelin (norway), kerry (south africa), and lea (sweden).  the crew i mostly hung out with were veronica (sweden), warren (south africa) and aric (poland).  i spilled coffee in the first 5 minutes i was on the boat and warren called me hawaiian trouble, and that's what i was for the rest of the trip.

we did 4 dives our first day and they were amazing.  white tip sharks, rays, eels, anemone fish (nemos), giant clams, all the same stuff but massive amounts of them.  the reef was endless.  the first dive i buddied with iseta but after that she started taking her advanced open water course and i couldn't dive with her again.  the second dive i buddied with chiu-ki and francesco, and at the last minute grabbed veronica (crew) since she had an hour free.  we ended up ditching chiu-ki and francesco since he was taking pictures and forward movement was pretty slow.  the upside to that was that veronica was the cook and after being her buddy she started making me my own private dishes without onions, eventually making almost the entire menu onion free.  

i can't remember the last time i've eaten so well.  the first day it seemed like all we did was dive and eat.  diving takes so much energy and veronica cooked up more food than could possibly have been eaten by twice that many people.  if it wasn't a main meal time there was cake, fruit, cookies, but the meals were beyond expectation.  

the third dive i didn't want to go with the picture takers again so i asked colin and darryl if i could jump in with them.  darryl's main purpose of the trip was to swim with turtles.  i had seen turtles on both my first dives so he was happy to have me along, called me turtle girl.  he hadn't seen one yet.  

for some reason every dive i've done in australia i've ended up being the leader and navigator.  i'm not sure why that is since i have the worst navigation skills on the planet, but people are happy to follow me.  to my great surprise i find that i'm an underwater navigational goddess.  i always know where the boat is, even if i think i'm lost.  i'm still having a hard time reconciling this idea.  so colin and darryl are more than happy to follow me around.  

our first nite dive was great.  there were sharks everywhere, white tips and greys.  we found a spotted leopard shark hiding in a cave.  starfish and shrimp and cool things lurking in strange places.  navigating at nite was easy because the boat turned all its lites on and it glowed underwater.

sleeping on the boat was a challenge for me.  i've had sleep problems for this entire trip, i can't remember a nite when i didn't wake up several times wondering where i was, but the boat was hard.  i didn't mind the rocking but my cabin was near the generator so very loud, the air-conditioning wasn't working so it was hot, and my bunk was about a foot shorter than i needed.  i tried to sleep sideways but the wooden bed frame dug into my legs, iseta left the door open for some cool air but we couldn't figure out how to turn out the hall lites so it was bright too.  i ended up sleeping about 3 hours the first nite.

we saw lots of great stuff on the first dive of the second day.  half an hour in i'm checking on air and darryl told me that he's half so i planned a meandering trail that will take us 15 minutes to get back to the boat.  but obviously i wasn't paying close attention because darryl actually told me that he's low on air and i didn't get it.  so i was wandering through corals and he grabbed me and told me that he only has 50 bar left, we were 10 minutes from the boat.  oops.  i still had over 100 bar so i wasn't worried about anyone dying, we could share if necessary.  we made it back to the boat and they told darryl's wife to look out, i'm trying to kill him.  i asked if she has insurance, and if she really loves him that much.  we didn't see his turtle.

colin and darryl had been buddies all day but darryl decided to ditch us and go with annelin and linn, they were more his speed in terms of air consumption.  and cute boy was now my permanent dive buddy.  

like darryl, annelin wanted nothing more than to swim with a turtle and she hadn't seen one either.  

the second dive was fantastic again, schools of sweetlips, bump headed parrots, rays, great.  again i can't believe that i can get dumped in a giant ocean, zigzag through coral formations, get sidetracked by animal watching, and still find the boat when we need to.  i was beginning to develop an ego.  and that's usually when it all goes wrong.

the third dive colin and i set out to find something called 'clown fish city'.  we descend, find the mooring blocks, swim at 150 degrees through a couple giant rocks that turtles might be hanging out at, then find a trio of huge coral formations called 'mickey mouse' and we should find all of the anemone fish.  that was the plan.  then we continue to the wall, put it on our right shoulder and make a square back to the boat, returning at 300 degrees.  no problem.  after an hour of discussion we never figured out what went wrong.  

part of the problem was that i brought my camera, this was the third dive of the day and pretty shallow and my underwater camera can take 10 meters or so.  so i started off not paying close attention.  another problem was colin chasing a turtle and i didn't make note of our new direction.  we never made it to mickey mouse or clown fish city and i still can't understand how we got so far off course.  the only thing that makes sense is that we swam through some sort of narnia wardrobe, instead of returning to the boat at 300 degrees we had to surface for visual confirmation and set a course at 60 degrees, about 300 yards away.  we were in some seriously deep water, no fish, no coral, just colin and i and dark blue.  

standing on the top deck afterward we could see the entire reef in light greens and blues, so close to the boat, and it didn't look like there was any way we could have taken a wrong turn.  but somehow we must have taken a swim through to the other side of the reef and went the complete opposite direction.  the spotters on the boat saw us surface and when we returned we were subjected to every joke imaginable.  everyone heard about our dive.  it was nonstop laughing at our course.

after dinner we had another nite dive, the joke was that i should make sure i swam back to the boat lites, not the one light miles and miles away.  that didn't stop 4 other people asking if they could join my group.  we descended and instantly saw about a dozen sharks circling under us, a very intimidating site.  the hightlite of the nite was the biggest turtle i've ever seen who sleeps in a cave nearby.  easily the size of a small car, he was over 100 years old.  unfortunately darryl was not in my group and never saw him.  we never got lost.

iseta had gotten her advanced open water certificate during the day so we celebrated with the bottle of vodka i had brought.  we found some orange juice boxes for mixer and had a party.  i thought that might help me sleep the second nite but i was wrong.  the crew had tried to fix the air con in our room but couldn't get it to work, instead they cranked up the air and everyone else was freezing.  didn't help us.  i ended up sleeping in the salon for about 4 hours before veronica had to start preparing breakfast.  

the final day of the trip was 3 dives at coral gardens.  i don't have enough adjectives to describe how beautiful it was.  colin and i had great dives and my navigation was once again perfect.  darryl had left annelin and linn's group because they couldn't find a turtle and joined another, and it was exactly as expected, annelin and linn spent 20 minutes with a turtle and darryl's group never saw one.  darryl was the only person on the boat who didn't see a turtle.  finally, someone else that everyone can make jokes about instead of me.  

linn and i spent most of the trip home in the wheel house, she wanted to steer the boat.  we had a last briefing before we got to port, and the crew made plans to meet everyone later at a bar for dinner and drinks.  aric drew up a navigational chart to the bar with directions in degrees for colin and me.  

i got word at the bar that there was a foosball table nearby so we headed out to find it, there was no foosball but more wet tshirt contests.  what a way to end my time in cairns.

aric doing a dive briefing

rainforests and waterfalls

on wednesday i did a rainforest and waterfall tour outside of cairns, in the atherton tablelands.  we went to a highland tropical complex mesophyll rainforest, if anyone is interested in the specifics.  it wasn't a real intense tour, get on a bus, drive a couple hours, walk on a path for about 500 meters looking at plants, get back on the bus, drive a few minutes, walk 600 meters in the forest and swim in a lake, get on the bus, drive a few minutes, walk 20 feet to a waterfall and swim, get on a bus, walk 100 meters, swim under a waterfall, drive 5 minutes, look for platypuses, drive home.  it was a 12 hour trip but it was not anything physically exerting at any point, just a long day.  a nice day, but long.

i met a great bunch of people on this trip from holland, bangladesh, italy, brazil, israel, austria and australia.  i like being the only american although that doesn't stop the american jokes, it just means that i get more attention.  and not always in a good way.  

the rainforests were beautiful, the highlight of the first was a cathedral fig tree.  the original tree has long since been covered by other trees roots so all you can see is hundreds of smaller trees roots (smaller being several stories high), then a trunk way way up in the air, then leaves.  pretty massive.  

i was pretty amazed that there were no mosquitos in the forest.  i had previously thought that it was because of the bats but turns out that the bats were strictly fruit eaters.  and not even exactly bats, but spectacled flying foxes (i think, no internet right now so no fact checking, and given that i'm half way through a bottle of australian red wine i'm not likely to remember to look it up).  not really sure why there were no mosquitos.

our guide bart loved to find us bizarre insects, not so much to show us cool things but to try and scare the girls.  we got to play with a rhinoceros beetle and leeches.  both were entertaining, and bart named every insect he picked up 'eric'.  after the second rainforest walk we sat in a park at lake barrine to have lunch and ashish discovered that he had picked up a leech along the way.  it was between his toes and about 20 times the size of the one we were playing with.  after much fussing it was finally scraped off, blood everywhere, lunch is served.

bart is also the first person here that i've been able to talk american football with.  i wasn't able to find anywhere to watch the alabama game so i got a play by play during the trip.

the waterfalls were fun, the first one we went to was milaa milaa falls, the most photographed waterfall in australia.  that's because you can drive right up to it.  the water was pretty brown and freezing but we swam anyway, the cascade was fairly small because its the end of the dry season.  we swam behind the falls and took tons of pictures and at some point i slipped on the slimy rocks and have had a giant bruise covering my entire left thigh.  

this is also the falls that the somewhat famous 'hair flip' pictures were taken for some shampoo ad long ago.  so we (not only girls) sat in the pools and tried to recreate it.  i just don't have enough hair.

another waterfall, climbing on rocks, doing stupid things because most of the guys are 20 years old and i was the only girl stupid enough to follow them around.  good fun.

the last stop of the day was at a river where the platypuses feed.  we waited around in total silence so we didn't scare them and finally we saw a couple from a distance.  they are much smaller than i imagined.  very cute.  

we made a plan on the way home to meet up and have some drinks after the trip.  i ended up going out with christine (austria), ashish (bangladesh), marco (italy) and marcio (brazil).  marcio took us to a bar he liked in town, loud, dancing on tables to win prizes, and a wet tshirt contest.  that's what you get for following a 20 year old brazilian guy to a bar.  

first day of liveaboard

the stars at nite over the Great Barrier Reef are phenomenal. not a cloud in the sky and no lites in sight.

just got out of the water from the nite dive, lots of grey sharks circling us. did 3 other dives today which were all great.

I'm typing this on my phone (yes, wifi on the boat) so this is about as much patience as I have for typing.

worst.divebuddy.ever.

today was my second day of great barrier reef diving, much like the first, get on a giant boat with 100 other people and spend an hour and a half getting to the site for 3 dives.  one difference was the ocean conditions, the wind was up and the swell was big and the boat was rocking and rolling and jumping and smashing down.  i estimated that over half the passengers were throwing up at some point, and some refused to leave the inside of the boat when the crew tried to get them outside and to the back.  one woman, sitting right up front near me barfed and cried the entire way with her eyes closed and no one could get her to move.  i figure if i could make it through those conditions and listen to people vomiting and smell it and still not get sick then i never will.  sweet.

our first task was to fill out the paperwork about experience and medical conditions and such, pretty normal.  all of the certified divers (again, about 20 of us) were grouped together at the start.  one english woman (with a horribly awful whiny accent) immediately had dozens of questions for the crew, one of the questions on the paper was 'have you ever dived in the ocean?'  and she flagged down a guy and asked 'which ocean? this ocean?  what if i've dived in a different ocean, does that count?  are the oceans the same?  i did dive one but maybe it doesn't count?'  she had endless questions about her basic paperwork and finally the guy just sat down when he realized he wasn't getting away from her any time soon.

i was sitting with a canadian woman (tamara) and we were practically rolling on the floor laughing at her.  

when we finally get to our dive site the divers get called to the back deck to gear up and my gear was set up next to the crazy woman's.  she had trouble with her regulator (not really) and called several crew over to look at it, they all said it was fine but finally she demanded that someone switch it out.  then we're seated, strapped into our gear and ready to go and the boat ran over and severed the mooring line, which means we have another 15 minutes to sit in full gear while they fix it.  so crazy woman starts making small talk with me, 'have you dived here before?' 

'yes' 

'is this ocean salty?'

'um, i think that's why they call it an ocean, there's salt'

'but is it really salty?'

'i don't know how to answer that'

'i'm asking because i'm really thirsty'

at that point i knew she was going to be assigned as my dive buddy, it was inevitable.

we were still waiting on the mooring and she asked if i would be her buddy so i told her that they assign them, we can't choose, i was still holding out hope of getting tamara who used to be a dive instructor.  no such luck, it was a group dive but i got her.

finally its time and we jump in, the first thing she does is swim over and grab my arm.  first dive hasn't even started yet and i'm completely annoyed at her.  i let her know that she is at no time welcome to touch me and i head down to the bottom.  in the minute it took to go down i received 6 ok signals from her.

i like to dive with a little space so if people are crowded around the guide i'll hang in back, or if people are off doing their own thing i'll go up front, just so long as i can see what i want to see and not bump into people.  crazy woman never got more than 2 feet away from me at any point, no matter how hard i tried to make some room she would swim right over and be touching me.  every time i looked to see what was touching me i'd see her flash an ok sign at me.  i wanted to give her the finger but thought that might be a bit too much.  she went so far as to swim up to my head and throw an ok sign in front of my mask, i wanted to turn off her tank.

i'm not a bad dive buddy but there's only so many times you need to check on your partner.  i was always aware of where she was (even when she wasn't touching me), i looked back a lot since she refused to go in front of me, she seemed fine.  in my opinion that's what is required of me.

there were a lot of cool things on the dive but my annoyance level was pretty high and i didn't enjoy it as much as i could have.  40 minutes of ok signals.

the dive ended and we're back on the boat with about 20 minutes until our second dive, and i'm again getting my gear ready as tanks are being refilled.  i only wore a skin suit for the first dive and was kinda cold so i grabbed a half wetsuit to throw on top.  crazy sat down next to me and started to lecture me on the proper way to be a good dive buddy, she didn't think i was doing my job.  'i'd appreciate it if you'd give me the ok sign more often when we're under water' (i had given her one the entire first dive).  i told her that i always knew where she was and she looked ok and that i didn't feel the need for constant ok signs.  'how do you know i'm ok if i don't give you an ok sign?'  well, you're swimming along normally and looking at stuff and look pretty ok so i don't really need to ask.  'but how will i know if you're ok if you don't tell me you're ok?'  well, if i'm swimming along normally and looking at stuff and i look ok then you should just assume that i'm ok.  'you need to give me more ok signs on the next dive, i need to know that you're ok'.  i had to turn and start talking to the woman on the other side of me because i was afraid i was going to hit her.

time for the second dive.  again i had a shadow throwing ok signs at me.  i refused to even give her one for the entire dive.  i get a little stubborn when i'm annoyed (which i'm sure you all know).  i looked back and saw my buddy several times, i did my job.  but i concentrated on the reef and the crazy things living down there and ignored her as much as possible.  squid, white tip reef sharks, turtles, rays, unicorn fish, another giant napoleon wrasse, huge grouper, completely excellent.  

we had about 7 minutes left to dive when i felt crazy grab my leg and pull me backwards.  that's fucking enough.  turned out her ear felt funny.  i don't give a shit.  so i got the guide's attention and signaled to him that my buddy was sick, then i swam away in hopes that he'd send her to the surface.  but she wasn't sick, and nothing was wrong with her ear so my shadow stayed (after i got several more ok signs).

lunch break was between the second and third dives and i made it pretty clear that she was not to speak to me again.

third dive was spectacular, i started off by getting attacked by a good sized trigger fish.  its mating season for them and they actually build nests so they defend them ferociously.  would have been nice if someone had told me there was a nest near the mooring of the third dive site, they dive there every day.  i was descending, minding my own business, and here comes this big fish with big teeth straight at me.  it was kinda funny more than scary because trigger fish are so cute but he wouldn't leave me alone.  i tried to swim away and he just kept nipping at me, i could see my dive buddy having a minor underwater heart attack from all the exertion of the ok signals she was throwing at me.  which i ignored.

most surprisingly on the third dive my crazy buddy left me alone.  i looked back for her here and there and she was several feet behind me and i had some space.  aaah.  and when we surfaced i never had to see her again.

bats in the park

miscellaneous australia

i'm a bit behind in my recording of history so this is just a post with random things so i remember them later.

sydney has a 7 story tall screen in the imax.  and the crappiest movies playing.  i thought i had to go see something 7 stories tall but i got there and it was $31.  to see a movie that i had no interest in.  cross fingers that when i have a nite to kill before my flight to cambodia they will have found something decent to play.

i met pam's friend clare for drinks at the opera bar shortly before new years.  when she told me to meet her there i thought oh cool, an opera bar, thinking it would be like seattle and only people that worked in the opera or theater would go there.  totally wrong, hundreds of people.  they only call it the opera bar because of the proximity to the sydney opera house.  there's an indoor bar with about a dozen bartenders and an outdoor bar with a few more and dozens of tables outside, then when those are full there's a cement bench that runs along the water for about a quarter mile filled with people.  its an enormous bar.  its even bigger when you've never met the person you're supposed to meet and don't know where to begin to look.  i pulled up her facebook page and studied her face and watched every person that walked by, and that actually worked.

she took me on a tour of cool pubs, one of which had a very very old woman playing trumpet and singing with a band doing jazz standards.  possibly the coolest thing i'd seen in sydney.  and then we went to dinner and i ate a kangaroo.

i'd previously written about the minor nitemare of my sydney apartment and i can now understand why that happened.  the woman who rented me the room was in new york and left her roommate shelly to take care of my arrival.  what i found out later was that shelly didn't know that some random stranger would be living in her house for a week until a couple days before i got there.  i guess i would have been kinda cranky too if that had happened to me.  so she had thought that with an extra bedroom for the holidays she could invite her friends to stay and that's how i ended up with 5 other people in a 2 bedroom apartment.  not ideal, everyone was polite but it was awkward, and after they left shelly stayed with her boyfriend and i had the entire place to myself.  

new years fireworks were pretty spectacular, the entire skyline was going off.  i went to the park with about a thousand other people who had been camped there and drinking all day so it was fun.  there are so many parks in sydney and they were all filled by 10am when i was wandering the city.  they had children's fireworks at 9pm then the real ones at midnite.  it was great to see them but i don't think i need to go again.  check it off the list.

so now i'm in cairns.  my flight was ridiculously expensive, actually twice as much as it cost to fly to australia from kauai.  that's what i get for holiday travel and no pre-planning, i guess.  i won't go into details but don't fly jetstar.

cairns isn't a place i'd visit again unless i had a lot more money.  i don't know how this is a backpackers destination since all the hostels i looked at cost as much as my hotel room, minus free lobby wifi.  and that's another thing i don't understand, australia barely has any wifi.  you can go some places and get it for an hour if you buy something, or most hotels offer it for a fee.  its sorta like cricket, no one can explain exactly what's going on.

i did try one upscale restaurant yesterday, not really by choice though.  the swedish woman i met on the dive boat invited me out to dinner with a couple friends.  they found it recommended in lonely planet, sort of an australian fusion place.  when we got there i looked at the menu and couldn't believe the prices but it was too late to back out.  my companions were 2 swedish engineers and a lawyer from dc, apparently with very substantial incomes.  the food was not amazing (as nothing has been since mexico) but it killed my entire food budget for a good week.  which is why i'm sitting at home tonite instead of a bar.  

i found a gym with an $8 daily fee (off hours) so i went for more power yoga.  i loved the power yoga in brisbane and was hoping it was the same, but not even close.  i knew it the moment the instructor walked in with a headset.  who does yoga over a loudspeaker?  bootycamp, spinning, trx, yes, scream at me, not yoga.  the class was full of people with new years resolutions to try something new, apparently.  it turned out to be some sort of horrible combination of yoga and calisthenics.  but it was only $8 so i can't be too angry.

this town also has a healthy population of bats and crazy birds.  at dusk you can walk through the center of town and watch thousands of bats waking up and terrorizing people with phobias.  its beautiful, the entire sky is filled with them.  during the day you can see them all hanging upside down from their tree limbs.  i'm not sure if its them but i haven't gotten a single mosquito bite since i've been here.

i think the biggest disappointment is that i live a few feet from the ocean and there is nowhere to swim.  the water is only a foot or so deep for quite a ways and there are birds wading and picking at things in the mud.  there are also 'beware of crocodile' signs all along the esplanade.  but i haven't seen one yet.

i spent most of today planning my next few weeks and happily, i think its about done.  i have another day of diving tomorrow, then a rainforest trip, a liveaboard boat (which absurdly has better wifi out on the reef than my hotel does), 3 days in port douglas, back to cairns for a flight to brisbane, a greyhound to coolangatta, then kawika is picking me up and i refuse to think further than that.  at that point i'll have 2 weeks until cambodia and i think i'll be happy to just surf, its been too long.  

i'm watching the bats fly off towards the mountains right now.  i hadn't realized they did that since i haven't ever sat on my balcony at dusk.  there's at least a mile of them and they're still coming out of the park.  if i said thousands of bats earlier i possibly underestimated.  this is definitely on the list of coolest things i've seen.

funnier than the crocodile signs

first dives on the great barrier reef

i did 3 dives today on the outer reef near cairns, australia.  diving the great barrier reef was definitely in my top 5 travel goals and it was both awesome-amazing-fantastic and slightly disappointing.  slightly disappointing only because it cost way more money and took way more time to get to yet wasn't proportionally better than cozumel or ambergris or roatan.

cairns is a strange town, not at all how i imagined.  giant hotels and trendy shopping and travel agencies and white tablecloth restaurants, if you woke up here and didn't know where you were you might not guess australia at first, there's nothing local about it.  all the docks are in one tiny section of town about a 15 minute walk from my hotel.  

i headed out this morning and was the first to arrive at the boat.  it was giant.  i was told to show up a little early if i didn't want to stand in line for check-in and i'm so happy i did, there were at least a hundred people and i was sitting in the a/c drinking coffee for about an hour by the time we were ready to leave the dock.  the trip to the outer reef was about an hour and a half and we got safety briefings and were split into groups, certified divers, people taking courses and snorkelers.  of the 100ish people only about 20 of us were certified, which really surprised me.  

we had a choice to go with a buddy or as a guided group for an extra $15 (i already paid about $180 for 3 dives).  but since i had no idea where we were i chose guided group for my first dive.  it was a group of 6, not too bad.  when it was time to get geared up we went to the dive deck and there were sick people laying all over the place and the crew had to move them out of the way, one poor guy had to be carried, he never made it off the boat the entire day, he just puked till there was nothing left and then passed out under a bench for hours.  that would suck.

first dive was pretty good, 3 minutes in and i saw the first shark, a white tip reef shark just cruising through.  fish, coral, fans, good stuff.  a couple out of control divers that the guide had to keep messing with but it was a better situation than in other places, when they were out of air he just sent them to the surface near the boat and the rest of us continued on.  

there was a giant napoleon wrasse, wally, that lives near the mooring and that's where the photographer set up camp for all the people that wanted pictures with it.  seriously, it was bigger than me and acted like a giant puppy.  we weren't allowed to touch it but the crew would grab it by the nose and guide it where they wanted for a good shot.  

i had borrowed mark's underwater camera and had it during this dive, got a few minutes of nice pictures, then a couple beads of water crept in.  crap.  fog.  crap.  little more water, i was sure the housing was sealed before i got in.  crap.  i think i owe mark a new camera.  crap.  i can't even get it to turn on now.  but long ago i learned that if i ignore broken electronics for a week or so they will magically start working again, so i'll use my camera in front of it, make it jealous, and it'll be ok.  not that i'll ever take it underwater again.  don't tell mark.

i didn't get a picture of wally.

we got back on board the boat and were only there long enough to get our tanks refilled, drink some water, and decide if we wanted another group or buddies.  i chose buddy and was teamed up with a guy and a girl.  first unguided dive ever.  i told them that i wasn't a good navigator, couldn't make my way through a town with a perfect grid pattern streets, etc, the guy didn't want to lead, the girl weaseled out by not saying a word and not looking at either of us, so by default i became our group leader.  yeah, that's a great plan.  whatever, i'll do what i want and they can follow, and if we end up a mile from the boat i don't mind the swim back.  the crew had a great system of making sure no one got left behind, they had a list of everyone and the number of dives they were doing and when i stepped on board i was instantly asked to sign my name that i returned from the dive.  regardless of how long it takes to get back they won't leave us out there.  ok let's go.

the first dive we headed out with the wall on our right so this time i went left.  and it was so strange being out there by myself (seemingly, the other 2 were just following behind me) in this enormous space.  i couldn't believe they just let anyone go out and make their own way.  especially me.

it was another good dive, saw some great stuff, checked on my buddies a couple times, when i tried to get some direction decisions the guy would just shrug and the chick wouldn't even answer, lame.  so i just kept going and hoped they had the sense to tell me to turn around if they were low on air.  i turned us around a couple minutes shy of our halfway time and then realized we had swum out with the current.  oops.  file that lesson for future use, too late now.  we swim back, slightly shallower, i quit paying any attention to my buddies except to note that they were still behind me, and 15 minutes later i start thinking about where the boat might be.  its not like they parked it squarely on the end of the reef.  couple more minutes, no boat.  turn to ask they guy if he has any idea where the boat is, shrug, ignore him again.  couple more minutes, about ready to just do a safety stop and surface wherever we were, and there's wally, welcoming us back.  i was so happy to see that big fish.

the guy and i were laughing when we got to the surface, can't believe we found the boat, the girl just swam away and thankfully i never saw her again.  

it was lunch time when i got back on (i was the absolute last person in line) and i headed up to the wheel house to eat.  i sat with a swedish woman who was there alone and we started chatting, she asked if i would be her buddy for the last dive.  i asked her how long she's been diving and she had just gotten certified about 20 minutes ago.  hell no.  what i dislike most about diving is that normally when someone is low on air the entire group has to surface, i'm not the best diver in the world but usually now i come back with the most air left.  i've been on dives where i've had to surface with over half a tank and i'm generally pissed off when that happens, this is too expensive to miss out on 15 minutes because someone is fucking around and wasting their air, or they're just crappy divers.  or new divers.  queensland rule is that no one can dive solo, if there are only 2 people and one is low both have to surface.  so no, i don't want to buddy with a brand new diver.  and i had to carefully explain that she didn't want to go out with me.  super awkward moment.  

there were a couple crew sitting nearby and they stopped their conversation and sat with huge grins on their faces as they watched me squirm my way out of being her buddy.  but really, as a brand new diver and the first time in the ocean (all but one dive had been in pools) she needed a guide.  worrying about her would totally ruin my last dive.

she gracefully accepted my decline, the boat moved to a new reef, and i got paired with the same guy from the previous dive.  they showed us a reef map and told us where we should head, seems easy.  i came up with a more comprehensive plan than our first dive together so we could agree before we got in the water and off we went.  find the wall, take a left.  swim to 150 bar, turn around, explore the bay that the boat is moored in until we're out of time.  super.  

but it didn't turn out so easy as that.  find the wall, that was the first problem.  we were swimming over dozens of small reefs just trying to find depth, we spent about 10 minutes at 5 meters and at that point i wasn't sure at all where we were.  i got that familiar 'i'm lost' panic pretty early on, the guy not helping me decide where to go at all, and just figured that wherever we end up at the end of our time we could swim back.  its not like you can get too confused at the surface, there was one giant boat and miles and miles of nothing else.  so screw it, enjoy the dive, worry later.  and then we found the wall.  another shark, squid, huge pineapple sea cucumbers, giant clams that must have been 3 feet wide, so much crazy stuff.  wish i had a camera.

i turned us around fairly soon though so we could find the bay.  we didn't have compasses, which i thought of after the first solo dive but forgot to ask for, so we swam and swam and then i knew we weren't going to surface anywhere near the boat.  again, who cares.  i didn't bother asking the guy where we should turn.  and as i found out later, he couldn't even figure out his dive computer, all he had to do was press the one button on it to get readings but he never did.  for both dives he went totally blind, he didn't have depth, elapsed time, anything, was just doing what i did.  

i tried to make notes of the times swimming in each direction but as i looked at cool stuff i just forgot, that plan didn't work.  we had about 5 minutes until we had to do a safety stop and i looked at my buddy and let him know i'm totally lost.  he shrugged.  i kept going, only a couple minutes left to check stuff out, we never found the bay but we could pretty much swim in small circles the entire time and not see everything anyway so no big deal.  and just as i'm signaling my buddy that we have to start going up i see our boat.  i have no idea how i found it again, i'm just laughing underwater.  how was that possible?  

turns out i'm a super navigator.  who would have guessed?  

never thought i'd miss pangas

sydney harbor bridge climb

today i did the sydney harbor bridge climb.  i had it all figured out how to sneak my camera under my jumpsuit but in the end we had to go through 2 metal detectors and i got a smack down.

sure, no cameras are allowed for safety reasons but there are so many great pictures to be taken from that view, 134 meters above water.  and i failed.

the climb itself wasn't very challenging, there are 2 sets of steps on the way up then mostly just walking plank walkways or gradual stairs.  at one point you pop up between lanes of traffic and that was pretty neat, on the way down i was between 2 trains on the other side.

the entire time you have a safety leash attached to a steel cord that runs the entire length of the trip. you hook on at the very beginning and there's no way to unattach (i tried that too).  the safety cord has anchors into the bridge steel every few feet and the leash has a big ball with teeth where it attaches so its able to go past each anchor without disengaging.  i've never seen anything like that and it was sorta fascinating how it worked.

the climb starts slightly above ground level and you walk the first planks right above the cars on the highway.  a set of stairs takes you to the upper level planks and you're at the height of the opera house and some of the taller buildings.  the second set of stairs takes you to the very top arch of the bridge and then you walk along the top, level with almost all of the highest buildings in the city.  except for the wind blowing a gazillion miles an hour it always felt safe.

our guide stopped us every few feet to talk about bridge construction, people that died, pointing out landmarks, etc.  at one point we saw a giant yellow rubber duck in the harbor the even she hadn't seen before, it must have been 2 stories tall.

our guide took alot of pictures at the top and i bought a couple, i'll get them posted at some point.  then we crossed the top of the arch and walked back down the other side for the other views.

the bridge climb itself was interesting but what really amazed me was the assembly line efficiency of this company.  there are groups of 14 that start every 5 minutes, all day long.  there are sunrise climbs, sunset climbs and nite climbs.  thousands of people per day.

each group gets called and there is a form to fill out and you blow a breathalyzer test.  the next room gets you a jump suit.  next stop is a belt and leash, then a quick set of demonstration stairs to see what its like and try out your safety leash.  next stop is supplies (hats, croakies, handkerchiefs), jackets for the cold top, then finally radios so you can hear your guide throughout the trip.  everything gets safety clipped to rings on your suit or your belt.

every station has all of the supplies in the exact order you need them, all the equipment is perfectly maintained, and each group files through each section 5 minutes apart and gets fitted.  the reverse is done when you return.  it was a great setup.

it did cost a little more than i would have liked, around $250, but i had to do it.  in total it was 3.5 hours and well over half of that was on the bridge.  there are something like 1400 steps round trip.

i'm leaving for cairns tomorrow, so ready to get out of the city.  time to start diving the reef.

its pretty damn high